1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive apparatus that records and/or reproduces an information signal to/from an optical disk and, more specifically, to a so-called slot-in-type disk drive apparatus that is automatically loaded with an optical disk by direct insertion thereof into the apparatus body.
2. Description of Related Art
An optical disk has been well known by CD (Compact Disk), DVD (Digital Versatile Disk), BD (Blu-ray Disk), and others, or a magneto-optical disk including MO (Magneto Optical) and MD (Mini Disk), for example. To be ready for these disks, disk cartridges, and others, various types of disk drive apparatuses have been put on the market.
The disk drive apparatus varies in type for disk loading, e.g., a type in which a lid and cover provided to a cabinet are open, and a disk is directly placed on a turntable visible therefrom, a type in which a disk is placed on a disk tray that moves in and out from a cabinet in a horizontal direction so that the disk is automatically loaded on a turntable inside of the cabinet when the disk tray is moved in, a type in which a disk is directly placed on a turntable provided to such a disk tray, or others. The problem here is that all of these types require a user operation of opening and closing a lid or cover, moving in and out a disk tray, loading a disk on a turntable, and others.
There is also a disk drive apparatus of a so-called slot-in type, in which a disk is automatically loaded on a turntable only by inserting the disk from a disk insertion/removal port provided to the front surface of a cabinet. This slot-in disk drive apparatus is provided with a pair of opposing guide rollers for use to sandwich a disk inserted from the disk insertion/removal port. The slot-in disk drive apparatus goes through, by rotating these guide rollers in the opposing directions, a loading operation of retracting the disk inserted from the disk insertion/removal port to the inside of the cabinet, and an ejecting operation of ejecting the disk from the disk insertion/removal port to the outside of the cabinet.
For mobile equipment for mounting of a disk drive apparatus, e.g., notebook personal computer, additional reduction is expected for size, weight, and thickness, and the same expectation is growing also for a disk drive apparatus. To meet such expectations, provided is a slot-in disk drive apparatus provided with a contact section at the tip end portion, and a plurality of rotation arms whose base end portions are rotatably supported. The contact section is abutted against the outer regions of a disk inserted from a disk insertion/removal port formed to a front panel. The disk drive apparatus goes through, while rotating the rotation arms in a plane parallel to the disk, a loading operation of retracting the disk from the disk insertion/removal port to the inside of the cabinet, and an ejecting operation of ejecting the disk from the disk insertion/removal port to the outside of the cabinet. As an example, refer to Patent Document 1 (JP-A-2005-259324). Among such disk drive apparatuses with the attempt of thickness reduction, there is an ultra-thin disk drive apparatus whose thickness is reduced down to 12.7 mm for use with a notebook personal computer, for example, or 9.5 mm equivalent to the thickness of a slim hard disk drive (HDD) unit.